The agriculture conundrum

THE AGRICULTURAL sector provides employment for about 3.3 per cent of the labour force and the involvement of many others though not as direct employees. However, the sector contributes only 0.4 per cent of the GDP, giving a clear indication that income levels are generally low while, under present methods, the labour required is intensive.

Since anticipated income is a major consideration in attracting people into an occupation, it would be exceedingly difficult to convince any substantial number of those seeking to engage in economic activity to take up agricultural pursuits.

In order to substantially increase local production in current crops to make market prices competitive and thus fend off imports or to diversify into the cultivation of new ones, either for export or local consumption, requires a huge investment of public sector resources.

There is the physical infrastructure requirement of drainage, flood control and irrigation, agricultural access roads, availability of land and provision of utilities.

More importantly, there is the need to provide the infrastructure for experimentation and innovation, for technology creation, acquisition and dissemination, training and skills upgrade, information and communication support, markets, processing and storage facilities, and access to funding and other support mechanisms.

On the supply side, production has to be increased to levels which will make the contribution to diversification meaningful. It is well to remember that in every country in the world where agriculture is buoyant, relevant and adequate, state support has been provided in one form or another.

However, in this country over the last half century, there has been a pronounced bias against the sustainable development of the agricultural sector. No administration, whether PNM, NAR, UNC or PP, has had a committed interest in agriculture and was willing to invest the required level of public resources and effectively incentivise private interests, especially small and medium scale.

The larger ones, it must be admitted, have not been overly sanguine in their commitment to the sustainable development of the sector.

The indifference to agriculture applies as well to the administration of which I was a member. Ironically, it was overwhelmingly supported electorally by the rural agricultural community.

In the year and a half I spent as Minister of Agriculture, it was difficult to convince the wielders of power in the government of the need to invest more public resources in the sector both for the restructuring of the sugar sub-sector and enhanced attention to other sub-sectors in the context of the diversification of the sector.

To illustrate, I had put forward a proposal for the ministry to be allocated $400 million over five years (annually $80 million) for the restoration and upgrade of priority access roads.

In the 2000 Budget, the ministry was allocated the princely sum of $12 million to be spent on agricultural access roads throughout the country. The controllers of the same administration, however, could find $1.2 billion to spend on an airport which was not a priority at the time.

It gives some indication as to where power resided in the administration and the primary beneficiaries.

The lack of attention to agriculture was of course aided and abetted by the windfall revenues accruing to the government from the energy sector. The turnaround in the mindset of the powers that be is highly inconceivable.

Progress in agriculture, as in any other sphere of economic activity, depends to a large extent in harnessing science and technology to its cause. In Trinidad and Tobago, we have lapsed noticeably in embracing innovation, new products and new methods in the service of agriculture. The benefits of whatever research is done are minimally disseminated to producers in the sector to improve plant and animal stocks or to promote greater efficiency in methods of production.